If Abe, John-Bot, Drew Tetz, and Seth Peterson aren't some of your favorite yoyo players ever, you might be doing it wrong. Take a look back at 2010 with this classic video from the most illustrious and mysterious team (yes, more mysterious than Team Mysterious Raccoon, even) in the history of Midwestern yoyoing. Yoyos used are all out of production, sorry.

If Abe, John-Bot, Drew Tetz, and Seth Peterson aren’t some of your favorite yoyo players ever, you might be doing it wrong. Take a look back at 2010 with this classic video from the most illustrious and mysterious team (yes, more mysterious than Team Mysterious Raccoon, even) in the history of Midwestern yoyoing.

Oh, the late 90s/early 2000s were an amazing time for yoyoing worldwide. Unfortunately, there is video evidence of a lot of it. Check out this commercial for the UK-based “PowerYO” line of products. Like most product lines that rolled in during the boom, this one didn’t last very long but at least we got this gem of a TV commercial.

Thanks to Luke Roberts (featured in the commercial!) for getting this glorious bit of awfulness online for us.

This was from way back in 2004, when a company in the UK (Peterkin) decided to start up their own yo-yo brand, and myself, Arron Sparks, Paul Sargent and Sean Misselbrook were part of the PowerYo demonstration team.

We toured across the UK – even doing a stint in Butlins! It was great fun and you can still even buy some PowerYo products to this day! (Some will be going up on the store this weekend).

Here’s a glorious bit of yoyo history…a Russell yoyo commercial from one of their Coca-Cola campaigns in the Philippines in 1988!

Russell Promotions started as the international arm of Duncan Toys back in the 1940s, and eventually split off entirely. Russell partnered for decades with Coca-Cola, offering them some of the most effective and pervasive promotions ever run, and cementing Coca-Cola’s market share across the globe by using yoyos as a “fad toy” that required money + bottle caps to buy. Brilliant, right? With this tactic Russell sold more yoyos than any other company in the history of the industry. Not bad!

Apparently, giant yoyos aren’t just for people trying to get into the record books. Back in 1986, a couple of inventive pranksters built a giant yoyo and hung it from the Portlandia statue in Portland, Oregon. Marked only with “Portland YoYo Co.”, the yoyo was about 24 inches in diameter and weighed about 40 pounds. And it was a lovely shade of orange.

Thanks to Ben McPhee for tipping us off to this article at OregonLive.com!

For the new generation of players, this sort of thing looks hopelessly dated and ridiculous but it’s worth noting that for a really long time, this VHS video was one of the only pieces of yoyo instruction available anywhere in the world.

The Smothers Brothers are a comedy duo that began performing together in the late 1950s. Brothers Tom and Dick Smothers built a generally clean but often subversive comedy act that slipped in a lot of left-leaning political views, social commentary, and other sub-culture references that audiences at the time either loved or hated. They were cutting edge for many years, and when they landed “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” on CBS. According to Wikipedia “it started out as only a slightly ‘hip’ version of the typical comedy-variety show of its era, but rapidly evolved into a show that extended the boundaries of what was considered permissible in television satire.” The show featured many writers and series regulars who went on to successful comedy careers, including Steve Martin. The show also presented the top musical acts of the day, many of whom were shunned elsewhere on TV due to the nature of their music, including The Doors, Joan Baez, Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane, Pete Seeger and a stunning performance by The Who which climaxed with the literal explosion of their drums.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” became as controversial and influential as it was popular, satirizing politics, racism and the unpopular Vietnam War among other topics. Despite the show’s success, in April of 1969, the Smothers Brothers were fired by the CBS Television Network. “Smothered – The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” a film by director, Maureen Muldaur, documents the Brother’s struggle against censorship and, as a lawsuit later determined, the wrongful firing by CBS.

Comedy and variety pioneers, excellent performers, and an entertaining yoyo player…the Smothers Brothers give us an excellent glimpse into the very early days of yoyoing, and a rare look at reclusive yoyo demonstrator Dan Volk who appears here as “The YoYo Master”. (Editors Note: He’s reclusive enough that he lives in Cleveland, probably about 20 minutes from me, we have friends in common, and I’ve never met the dude.)

Chuck Short found this great old bit of newsreel footage on YouTube, featuring a Filipino Regiment in the US Army. The entire reel is just a little under 5 minutes and worth watching the whole thing…but if you just want to see a couple of young Filipino soldiers slinging yoyos you can skip ahead to 2:33 in the video.

As usual, we get the whole “yoyo was invented by Filipinos” myth which is false, but still…it’s a pretty awesome bit of historical footage! Here is some more detail about this bit of film:

U.S. Army Filipino Infantry regiments training at Fort Ord, Camp Roberts, and Camp Hunter-Liggett, California during World War II. The video shows the training and routine of the soldiers, mostly comprised of Filipino American volunteers and veterans during the Japanese invasion of the Philippines and are preparing for the retaking of their homeland during Gen. MacArthur’s return.

Here’s an awesome submission we got from the 1960 Hong Kong yoyo champion, Tony Tebbutt. It’s always great to get first-hand accounts of yoyo contests from the “golden age”. Check out what Tony has to say about the contest below. (Thanks to Korda at YoYoStore.cz for sending us this one!)

That’s me in the center of the photograph, the 1960 yo-yo champion of Hong Kong and Macau. I won what was then an enormous prize of $7,500 HKD (editor’s note: that’s about $15,790 USD today!) sponsored by Coca Cola and Russell yo-yo’s. I think this was the first such contest in Asia and the skill level and engineering development of the yo-yo today is light years ahead of what we had in the 1960’s. Nevertheless the competition was as fierce as it is today and the experience was one of the highlights of my life. My ability with the yo-yo never left me and throughout my career I would find occasions to use my yo-yo to bring some fun and levity to speeches to some very large audiences. This Hong Kong boy, born of Eurasian heritage, went on to University in California and senior management positions in Canada and England before becoming the President of a $2 billion US company. Keep practicing, you never know where your yo-yo might take you! Today I am 66, retired, wrote a book on my teenage years in Hong Kong (including the yo-yo contest) and on occasion I still give yo-yo demonstrations.

As a former yo-yo prodigy, it is so exciting to read about the re-emergence of yo-yo contests around the world and then be able to watch some of the performances via YouTube. Technology and Talent have brought the modern-day yo-yo contest to a vastly different skill level vs. the way it was in Hong Kong in the year 1960. In those days, the contest format was very different but the pressure to perform was as grueling as it is for today’s contestants. If you would like to know more about a major yo-yo championship held back in the “old days,” the excitement, the drama and the prizes; I devote an entire chapter in my book A Rising Son In The Land Of Nine Dragons.

During the Hyper YoYo boom in Japan in the 90’s, all kinds of awesome accessories were branded with the Hyper YoYo logo and released to capitalize on the craze; various holsters and cases, wallets, socks, sports wear, and even…jelly drinks. I’m not even totally sure what a jelly drink is, but I remember Jennifer Baybrook telling me she was straight-up addicted to them, and drank like a half-dozen a day while she was touring in Japan with THP.

For Throwback Thursday, check out this hilarious old promotional footage that Duncan Toys produced in the 70’s.

The first four minutes are a yo-yo “history & science lesson” presented by Doug Behringer, who was the Promotions Director for Duncan during this era. Scratch your head while he explains how yo-yos are powered by the sun.

“What do you think would happen to a yo-yo in outer space? Without gravity, do you think it would spin forever?” I wish I could make this stuff up!

Also notice: towards the end of the bit, Doug explains that it’s called “playing yo-yo” rather than “playing with the yo-yo.” I’d reckon that the term “yo-yoing” hadn’t been coined yet. Crazy stuff.

The latter ten minutes of the film is an extraordinary glimpse at yo-yo contests of yesteryear – “How to Run a Yo-Yo Olympic Contest.” This was filmed in 1979 at Six Flags over Georgia, and distributed to parks and recreational departments across the country in preparation for this nationwide event orchestrated by Duncan Toys. According to the video, the Duncan Yo-Yo Olympics was open to all boys and girls under 16 years of age. Divisions were segregated between the sexes, and also either over or under 12 years old.

Contests seeded from the Playground level to the City Contests, followed by State Contests, and onto one of 9 Regionals. Finally the top 9 in the country were flown to Nationals at the Marriott Great America, in Illinois. The prize for a Gold medal at Nationals was a $1000 Scholarship Bond.

Duncan had certified demonstrators in every region of the country mobilize to sell yo-yos, teach tricks, and judge these competitions locally. In Atlanta, the regional demonstrator at this contest was Lance Lynch from Pensacola, Florida. With that fantastic mustache, watch in the film as Lance rounds the kids up in a line for the contest. Unlike modern freestyle based competitions, this primitive yo-yo contest format is very similar to how Kendama ladders are organized today. As Lance moves down the line of kids with a clipboard, everybody steps out from the line one at a time to attempt each trick. Here, everyone starts off with 100 points, and loses 2 points for each miss. It’s basically a sport ladder where the competitors move up the rungs in a group.

In this great black-and-white video we get a solid look at yoyo contests of the 1950s and “World YoYo Champion” Art Pickles.

I have to confess, I don’t really know much about Art Pickles. His name has come up a few times here and there in my various diggings into yoyo history, but I’ve never been able to find very much. He seems to be using and promoting an “off-brand” yoyo made by a company called Outspan, although I can also say I don’t really know anything about them either. Art Pickles is an anomaly in yoyo history…he seems to have come and gone without leaving much of a trace, and doesn’t appear to have ever worked for any of the major companies of the day. But damn he was stylish…check out those double Walk The Dogs!

One of my favorite things about yoyo history is all the weird stuff that falls out when you shake the family tree. And of all the ill-advised yoyo designs from years past, by far the most compelling is the P213.

Originally conceived by Doctor Popular, and based off old combination yoyo/spin top toys like the Kusan Twin Twirler and the Cheerio Double Doozer, Project 213 was a combination yoyo and spin top with a more modern and functional design than those before it.

Project 213 had a brief surge of popularity in the late 90s / early 2000s that was mostly hampered by two things: first, it was just really damn weird. And second, you had to make them yourself because no one sold them. Granted, this was at at time when yoyo modding was enjoying a huge renaissance, helped in part by the new online resources that actually allowed players to show off their mods and swap tips and techniques, and also by the fact that suddenly there was so much raw material out there for use, and a lot of companies used interchangeable parts. But still…you either had to make it yourself, or find someone willing to, and neither was particularly easy.

While Doc Pop was certainly the first to really build tricks for P213 (and the guy who named it), it was Chris Neff who fully embraced the possibilities and continued working not only on tricks, but also on steadily improving the actual design of the thing and manufacturing them one at a time for sale to similarly obsessed yoyo players looking for a new challenge. Despite Chris’ best efforts, P213 still never really took off although it does enjoy a certain fondness in the hearts of a handful of players who look past the inherent impracticality of being really good at something that almost no one cares about.

Here are a couple of old videos of Chris Neff using a P213 to it’s fullest capabilities. Enjoy!

I love love LOVE old training videos in general, and old yoyo training reels are the best! Brandon Jackson just uploaded this gem from the Duncan Toys vaults featuring legendary yoyo demonstrator Barney Akers helping teach how to run a basic yoyo contest.

A couple of notes the video:

– 7:48 – The narrator begins lying blatantly about the history of the yoyo. Yoyos originated in 450 BC Greece, or at least that’s as far back as any have been discovered. This nonsense was started in the 1940s by Duncan marketing director Tom Ives, and has been repeated ever since, including in textbooks and various history books. Yikes.

– They only spend 3 minutes discussing how to run a contest at the very end of the video…the rest of the video is devoted entirely to demonstrating the actual tricks. It’s not entirely clear, but it looks like this reel was specifically intended not for retail stores but for Parks & Recreation departments across the country. In the 1970s and 1980s, Duncan had slowed their demonstrator program down considerably from its heyday in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, and relied predominantly on television and brand recognition to sell the product.

– Phyllis Kelsey was adorable. Jack Bozung was not.

Huge thanks to Duncan Toys and Brandon Jackson for sharing this with us!

We’ve talked before about yoyo music, but in addition to the slightly-awesome Alex Garcia theme song, there have been some pretty amazing clunkers written about yoyos.

This one popped up on my radar today…it’s a very old Scottish school children’s song, at least 50 years old.

Less charming but significantly more hilarious is this cover of The Bangles “Walk Like An Egyptian” by British artist Jode. I don’t even have to make any jokes about this, all you have to do is watch it.

From legendary comedy songstress Ruth Wallis comes this series of double-entendres on a 78-speed single from 1947.

I have no idea how old this is, but it’s worth including because seriously…LOOK AT THAT GUY’S SUIT!

Last but not least, we have to hook you up with the Super YoYo theme song from the 2000s “Super YoYo” cartoon that originated in Japan, and then was adapted for the Chinese market.